


Reprieve

by infernal



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dimension Travel - Falling Into Alternate Universe where in an Established Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-08-20 13:49:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/pseuds/infernal
Summary: It's not especially strange that Loki wakes up after dying. It's strangewherehe wakes.





	Reprieve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



> I chose not to warn as this does contain some potential issues regarding informed consent (and the lack thereof due to dimension travel weirdness); please check the end notes if this is a concern for you!

His survival is hardly a surprise — not to him, at any rate, accustomed as he is to clawing his way back to life only to find, several bad choices later, that he probably shouldn't even have bothered. 

No, the surprising part, Loki thinks as he wills his breathing to remain even, is that he is _comfortable_. The sheets he lays on are the finest he has felt since leaving Asgard, and while his body is sore, it's the sort of ache that follows an active day or an exhausting night, not the kind one gets from being enough of a fool to fight the Mad Titan and lose. 

And, perhaps most strangely of all, Thor lays in the bed beside him. Loki has yet to open his eyes, but there is no mistaking who shares his bed; the sound of his snores is nearly as much of a giveaway as the smell of petrichor, which always seems to linger on Thor's skin after using his powers. It was the smell on the air when Thanos snapped his neck; strange that it brings him such comfort now.

So, then: this is the situation, or at least all the bits of it that Loki can glean without moving. Reluctantly, he opens his eyes, and immediately his heart sinks. He's in his old quarters in Asgard, and that surely means that this is a mere dream. Or he has finally died after all, perhaps — but surely he has done no deed so good that would merit an afterlife so kind.

Thor stirs behind him, and Loki tenses when he feels strong arms envelop him, tugging him back against Thor's body. "Thor?" he asks, hating the way his voice comes out unevenly.

He does not see Thor's frown, but feels it — quite literally, in fact, as it's pressed against his neck. "What troubles you, brother?" Loki doesn't respond; his breath has been stolen by Thor's lips, kissing the back of his neck through his hair. 

He has not survived after all, Loki decides with a sudden plummeting feeling. He is still dying, and his mind has conjured a pleasant scene to ease his passing.

"Loki?" Thor says, and Loki sighs, letting himself relax against Thor. If these are to be his last moments, he will not spend them in distress.

"Bad dreams," Loki says. "Nothing more. Go back to sleep, Thor. Don't trouble yourself." 

Thor makes a low noise in his throat. "Perhaps I'd like to trouble myself," he says, and he plants another kiss against Loki's neck — then one lower, on his shoulder. "Surely you don't think so little of me that you'd think I could simply slip back into slumber, while the shadows of your mind kept you awake?"

"Surely not," Loki agrees with a little gasp as Thor follows the kiss with a slight scrape of teeth. 

He feels Thor's smile against his skin, and before he can second-guess himself, he rolls over and presses a kiss of his own against that smile.

Thor opens for him immediately, letting Loki roll him onto his back, letting him straddle him, letting him settle his weight so that Thor is effectively pinned to the mattress. When Loki tries to break the kiss for a moment's breath, Thor follows him, kissing him until they're both gasping.

"So desperate for me, brother?" Loki teases, delighting in his eagerness. "And here I thought I was the one in need of comforting."

"You didn't ask me what kind of dreams _I_ had," Thor says, giving him a rueful smile. 

"Oh?" Loki says, leaning down to bite at Thor's earlobe, then says, "Perhaps you should tell me about whatever it is that has you in such a mood." 

"Well," he says, his voice dropping in register. "Do you remember the feast when we welcomed Fandral home from Niflheim?"

"Mm," Loki says. He does not, of course. "No, definitely not," he says, tone flirtatious and jocular. "I think I'd like to be reminded of it."

"Well, as you _should_ remember, we skipped the feast entirely. Stole a bottle of wine and a basket of supper from the kitchens and made off into the mountains to drink the night away by ourselves. Of course, when we nicked it we didn't know it was from Idunn's special stash."

"Oh," Loki says, chuckling against Thor's throat. "Ah, yes, now I see why I might have memory issues from that evening."

"We had a few sips and then you seduced me under the stars," Thor said, his voice low and yet nostalgic at the same time. "That's what I dreamed of, of course. Not the part where we finished the wine afterwards and I woke up hanging by my cape from a lamppost." 

Loki laughs along with his brother, but finds himself burning with envy. He had asked expecting something lurid, not a nostalgic, fond memory, and is stricken with how much he _wants_. He doesn't remember it — of course he doesn't remember it, because it never happened to him, it's just some… some construction of his mind, and of course a dream in which he and his brother have this love, this peace between them would be replete with stories of a life lived together. But it burns that he has never lived it, nor will he. 

And yet he can feel it so clearly; can practically taste the apples, even, and expects this phantom memory will haunt him for whatever time he has left.

And that time is brief, of course, so he shakes his head, schooling his expression into something heated, and bites his lip. If Thor had any doubts about where Loki's mind was, the simple expression is enough to chase it from his thoughts. "I daresay we have time to make a few more happy memories," he says, and rolls his hips. 

Thor, thankfully, doesn't need any further convincing.

* * *

When he let himself imagine this, he always imagined something heated and combative, more of a fight than a fuck, but this is a different beast entirely. Thor is not quite gentle with him, but there is tenderness nonetheless: the way his palm cradles the back of Loki's head, thumb stroking his hair; the way he steadies him with a hand to the hip when Loki rides him; the way he kisses him before, during, and after, as much as he can, with an ease that implies his belief that Loki deserves his affections, his attentions, his steadfast love.

Loki's fantasies had always involved rousing Thor's anger, of Thor putting him in his place. If he is being put in his place now, then Loki has no choice but to believe that his place is here, consumed by Thor, consuming him in turn, until there is nothing left of either of them that does not belong to the other. 

It's that thought that has him tipping over the edge, completely undone. Thor, who has barely let a moment pass with his mouth not on Loki's, kisses him through it, and through his own climax, until their movements still and they collapse together onto the bed, sated and pliant, curled against one another.

"I believe we'll both sleep better now," Thor says, and Loki laughs, louder perhaps than the joke merits. Yes, Loki will rest well indeed; if there are powers beyond his knowledge out there, they have certainly done him a kindness in letting this be the last thing he sees before he slips into the darkness.

* * *

It's only when he wakes up again that he realizes that he is still very much alive, in a universe that is very much not his own. Thor entreats him to take breakfast; his stomach twists, not from hunger but the idea of seeing his mother again. And Odin; he wonders if the strange peace they had found at the end would carry over into this world, if his other self has felt the same hurts, forgiven them instead of letting bitterness carve out a place in his heart, laying its roots in the farthest corners of his being until it underwrote his every action.

He has always grasped for his fair share, and then for far more than that; yet everything he grasps, he loses. He could stay in this world, and it's such a tempting thought that he aches with it, but — in this world, he cannot lose. And he's still got one thing left of his own.

This Thor looks upon him with two eyes, yet with half as much sight. Loki knows this Thor would be blind to his tricks, unable to see through his lies; that has yet to realize that Loki is not _his_ Loki is particularly damning. He is a Thor who can love him easily, because he had never lost him, never mourned him, never suffered the complicated tangle of betrayal and relief every time Loki reappears from certain death on the opposite side of a battlefield.

Thor still looks at him patiently, waiting for Loki's answer about breakfast. Loki places a kiss at the corner of his mouth, sweet and familiar, as if he does this every morning. "I think I'll simply have a large lunch," he says. "Besides, I have a few things to take care of. You'll give my regards to mother?"

"And father," Thor says reproachfully, as if this is an argument they have frequently. Perhaps it is; Loki will not be here to have it again, so he gives a fond, long-suffering smile, the kind this other version of him might give. 

"Yes, him too," he agrees, and then — because he can, because he means it, because he may never get the chance to say it in truth to the one who should be hearing it — "I love you."

"And I you," Thor says, smile as radiant as the sky.

Loki thought it would do him well to hear it, but his stomach sours at the words. It is agonizing to know that every moment he stands here is a moment that this Thor does not have the Loki he deserves; that far, far away, _his_ Thor is without the Loki he fought so hard to love. 

They part with a kiss — which Loki draws out for as long as he can — and the promise to meet at midday in the dining hall. It's hardly the first time he's decided to break his word to his brother before the vow has even left his mouth, but for perhaps the first time in his life, he regrets that it passes his lips at all.

* * *

Heimdall is waiting for him when he reaches the Bifrost. "You know who I am," Loki says.

He inclines his head, remaining silent.

"And my counterpart? Is he —" _trapped in my dead body, or dead himself_ , goes unsaid, but Heimdall is canny enough to hear it regardless.

"He drifts," Heimdall says. "He will return none the wiser, and this day will seem ordinary to him, blending in with so many days like it." He gives Loki a long, considering look before he speaks again. "There are harder days ahead for you, Loki Odinson."

He squares his shoulders. "Yes, and I wish to face them," he says. 

Heimdall nods to the center of the bifrost, and Loki steps into it. "It will be painful," he tells Loki. "But you will survive it."

"I usually do," Loki says with a wry smile. It strikes him that this may be the last time he looks upon Heimdall's face, and he fixes the sight in his memory before the bridge opens. It is unlike any travel he has done through the Bifrost before; it is his soul that travels, not his body, and he watches it crumple onto the bridge before he is swept away, further and faster than should be possible.

* * *

Waking is as painful as Heimdall promised, but he does survive it. His people, his friends, still lay fallen around him; the wreck of the ship drifts aimlessly through space; his magic fizzles when he attempts to heal himself; he does not know if Thanos has completed his goals yet.

But he survives, and wherever Thor is, he will find him.

**Author's Note:**

> The consent issues I mentioned above: while both Thor and Loki consent to sex in this fic, Loki doesn't realize until later that he isn't having a deathbed hallucination. As well, Thor is (and remains) unaware that the Loki he's slept with isn't the Loki from his universe.
> 
> Also, sorry to anyone seeing this again — I'm not normally a redater, but I was fixing a spacing error and figured hey, why not just this once!


End file.
